Abort, Retry, Fail: Gaming’s Biggest Disappointments of 2012

The game industry keeps changing, and the games we play along with it. Each year turns out to be more tumultuous than the one before, with no end in sight. Some gamemakers are able to navigate these waters better than others. But even if they are generally able to make the transition from old models to new ones, there are still going to be bumps in the road — many of which affect players.

This year, the things that disappointed the Wired staff weren't just bad games — they included inelegant aspects of good games that dragged down the experience, questionable choices by game publishers that caused excellent games to get overlooked or damaged, and shaky launches of new gaming hardware that are either opening-night jitters or a sign the whole production's going to go under.

Here are Wired's picks of the biggest gaming disappointments of 2012.

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10. Steel Battalion Heavy Armor’s Very Existence

The return of the Steel Battalion series this year was a moment roughly analogous to the time Michael Jordan tried to play baseball. The original game used a massive controller with over 40 buttons, giving players the feeling of piloting a huge Japanese mecha. Unnecessary sequel Heavy Armor, by contrast, was reviled for its frustratingly inaccurate Kinect controls. It would occasionally give you the feeling of piloting a complex robot, but take it away just as quickly as the camera fell back into the depths of incompetence. Swing and a miss. — Andrew Groen

Screenshot: Capcom

9. Diablo III Lacks an Endgame

With 12 years separating it from its predecessor, Diablo III came with extremely lofty expectations. While the general consensus was positive, the months that followed its launch have shown that its endgame content is lackluster. It still doesn’t have player-versus-player combat. A month before the game came out, Blizzard said it was removing the feature and would patch it in later. Well, later’s here, and without a way to stab and bash my fellow players, the reward for loot grinding was naught but more efficient loot grinding, not upping my ass-kicking ability. Diablo III might have been addicting in its early days, but there’s a reason they call it “grinding” and I don’t see myself back in Hell any time soon. — Bo Moore

Screenshot: Activision Blizzard

8. Kinect Star Wars

When we looked at the Wii remote for the first time, we imagined a Star Wars game where it was the lightsaber. This didn’t really happen, but it seemed like Microsoft was going to do what Nintendon't with Kinect Star Wars. Unfortunately, what we got was either broken, stupid or both (see above). — Chris Kohler

Screenshot: Microsoft

7. Mass Effect 3’s Letdown of an Ending

Has the gaming world ever seen such backlash and outrage as that which surrounded the ending of Mass Effect 3? After three lengthy role-playing games, players weren’t sure what happened in the story’s conclusion, felt the choices they’d made throughout the series had not had any impact, and had their hopes of a heroic, feel-good ending slashed. In response, BioWare released “Extended Cut,” a downloadable epilogue with added scenes. But it was too little, too late. We spent hundreds of hours over the last five years making choices that shaped the galaxy. But Mass Effect 3’s ending came down to a handful of options that were entirely unrelated to and uninfluenced by everything we’d done. — Bo Moore

Illustration: Electronic Arts

6. Wii U Faceplants the Online

I like the Wii U. I do. NintendoLand is a fantastic pack-in game with 12 wholly unique and equally interesting ways to use the innovative GamePad. And even if third parties don’t feel like being risky (do they ever?) they can just let you play their games on the pad’s screen instead of the TV. That's half the battle. But man, Nintendo really whiffed the other half. How did the company that missed the CD-ROM revolution because it disliked load times make an OS that feels like watching YouTube on a 56K modem? Why the extensive mandatory updates? Why is Nintendo TVii delayed, and why won’t Netflix work across both screens at once like Mario? Why do I have to re-download all my WiiWare instead of just copying it off an SD card? In 2013, Nintendo’s job isn’t just to release more Wii U games but to dramatically improve the user experience. — Chris Kohler

Photo: Ariel Zambelich/Wired

5. Square Enix’s Insane Mobile Pricing Schemes

The developer of Final Fantasy has made a big move into the mobile gaming market, with hardcore-oriented games like Final Fantasy Dimensions and Demon’s Score. But its pricing schemes for these games are actively working to keep players from trying them. We don’t think every iOS game needs to be a buck, but Dimensions costs nearly $40 — that’s as much as a Nintendo 3DS game for a far less polished product. Not only is Demon’s Score much more expensive, the initial download costs $7 up front, which many players decided was a “scam.” The games are actually very good, but the pricing plans are exorbitant and even deceptive. — Chris Kohler

Illustration courtesy Square Enix

4. Zynga Pees in the Mobile Gaming Pool

As the FarmVille maker attempts to shift its business from Facebook to mobile, it’s seeming like everything Zynga touches in the mobile space turns to mud. And it’s touching a lot of things. Things you might not want touched. It’s not just the fact that it keeps cloning indie games like Tiny Tower and Fruit Ninja. Since it acquired the creator of Words With Friends, it’s had the developer release bland games that aren’t as popular, and the founding Bettner brothers bailed in October.

Then Zynga ruined the iPhone’s best original puzzle game, Drop 7, by acquiring its developer, slapping its bulldog logo on it, and leaving it to die. It has hundreds of negative reviews from customers, some of whom can’t launch the game. It hasn’t shipped an update all year. Mobile gaming would be better off without Zynga. — Ryan Rigney

3. Konami’s “Improved” HD Games That Were Actually Much Worse

The “HD Collection” has become quite popular recently, as many publishers that had PlayStation 2 hits in their back catalog found they could make some quick money and satisfy their biggest fans by giving the games new high-def graphics and re-releasing them at budget prices for Xbox 360 and PS3.

But Konami managed to find a way to screw this up twice. Fans found that the gameplay in Zone of the Enders had been considerably slowed down compared to the PS2 original, removing the speed and grace of the combat. Konami’s fans were even more pissed about the way the Silent Hill remakes were treated: The graphics look worse than the SD originals and a buggy pre-release version of the games was used for the conversion, introducing mountains of glitches. Konami patched the PlayStation 3 version, then told fans it would be too expensive to patch the 360 game. But it kept their money. — Andrew Groen

Screenshot: Konami

2. Resident Evil Jumps the Shark

Resident Evil: Revelations for the 3DS was decent, but Resident Evil 6 for consoles was a shambling mess. Its three separate storylines attempted to please both the horror buffs who wanted a tense, scary experience and the mainstream gamers who wanted a guns-blazing action shooter. But all it did was make the famously convoluted Resident Evil narrative even harder to follow.

And while the player characters were made more agile, the ultra-dark environments and a camera that lingered too closely to the heroes’ backs made the action haphazard and confusing. A forthcoming patch will reportedly fix the camera, but it can’t put Resident Evil’s reputation back together again. — Daniel Feit

Screenshot: Capcom

1. PlayStation Vita Has No Game

Sony’s launch of PlayStation Vita had a lot of question marks. Nintendo 3DS had failed to sell at the same price point, and mobile games were eating the market. At least Sony would bring triple-A console experiences to handheld, right? Not so much. The launch day collection of franchise spin-offs and ports lacked a real system seller. Clever indie games like Sound Shapes give players something to do with Vita, but the bigger stuff keeps flopping. Most recently, the vaunted Call of Duty exclusive turned out to be total junk — and it costs $50. With Vita sales flatlining in both the U.S. and Japan, it’s difficult to foresee a situation where publishers dump more money and effort to create better games that won't sell. — Daniel Feit